A chronicle of my year abroad working as an English teacher in Yilan County, Taiwan

Monday, October 17, 2011

Chinese traditional painting: A first attempt

Every other Wednesday all of the Fulbright ETAs and their LETs get together for three hour continued TEFL training seminars. Usually, they're at the teacher's center in Yilan city but this week they decided to shake things up and send us someplace new. So we headed over to Tamkang University's Lanyang campus, which is situated literally on the top of Mt. Linmei in Jiaoxi.

Showing us how to paint a goldfish

We got to meet some of the students who are currently studying to become English teachers and we talked about ways to incorporate Halloween and other holidays into the classroom. But the real fun came when we headed down the hall for a lesson on calligraphy and Chinese traditional painting with one of the school's resident artists.

After a few quick but beautiful examples of each, he let us try for ourselves. Since I've been taking weekly calligraphy classes at Pei Cheng Elementary (which, for the record, I'm not so good at), I decided to try my hand at Chinese traditional painting.

Christine, Ellen, and I got to keep his example paintings!

The best part? Since I was paining pictures instead of Chinese characters, this teacher actually let me use my left hand! (Note: The fact that I've been attempting to learn calligraphy with my lame hand is probably a large part of why it's not looking so good).

As you can see, I must have been channeling my Aunt Janet because I painted a tea pot:

Not so bad for a first attempt, right? Maybe, if my life here ever slows down long enough, I'll take up a new hobby.

About Me

I'm the recipient of a Fulbright grant to teach in Taiwan for the 2011-2012 school year. I'm also a Florida girl at heart and a graduate of Elon University. Join me as I venture out into the real world and learn a little bit about a lot of things.